As the world is distracted by rampant inflation, food and fuel shortages, and the war in Ukraine, global elites are preparing for their annual confab on the issue they consider most important: climate change. And nothing underscores the global elites’ commitment to sustainable development and the global poor like a climate conference located at a ritzy seaside resort, buttressed by a cordon sanitaire of police checkpoints to protect the conference’s thousands of well-heeled attendees.
Such will be this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP27, which will kick off on November 6 at Egypt’s swanky Sharm El Sheikh resort on the Sinai Peninsula. Unlike major Egyptian cities like Cairo and Alexandria, Sharm El Sheikh isn’t encumbered by slums, high crime, beggars, and all the other concomitants of Third World despotism. Like many such resorts in otherwise impoverished, despotic countries in the “global South,” Sharm El Sheikh is swathed in the sort of swanky luxuries that any reasonable elitist would expect for a gathering to address the plight of the poor: glistening beaches, five-star hotels, shimmering tropical seas, first-class bars and restaurants — and swarms of military and police to guarantee a sanitized experience, safe from the unwashed masses of the local poor and radical street protesters alike.
Not all of the usual suspects on the Left are happy with this year’s Climate Change Conference venue. Norwegian activist Greta Thunberg will not be attending, decrying the hypocrisy of holding such an event in one of the world’s most mephitic police states, where political dissidents are routinely jailed, tortured, and worse. She has been echoed by the likes of Naomi Klein and many other celebrity leftist activists, who resent, among other things, their inability to carry out street protests to exert pressure from the far Left on conference delegates, including heads of state. True to form, Egypt has begun rounding up domestic protesters, and has already detained at least one foreign activist. Protesters will be allowed — but only in a carefully controlled area far from the actual climate proceedings.
Among attendees, Rishi Sunak, the U.K.’s latest prime minister, has announced that he will be attending, after initially declining to do so. Upon being sworn in to office last week, Sunak indicated that “pressing domestic commitments” like the U.K.’s economic freefall would preclude his attending. But after several days of ferocious criticism from domestic and international leftists, he abruptly about-faced and announced on Twitter that:
There is no long-term prosperity without action on climate change. There is no energy security without investing in renewables. That is why I will attend @COP27P next week: to deliver on Glasgow’s legacy of building a secure and sustainable future.
Another welcome turn of events for climate activists was the runoff electoral victory of Brazilian Marxist Lula da Silva, who made halting Amazon deforestation a centerpiece of his political comeback campaign against outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro. Lula wants nothing less than a “new world governance” for climate issues, as indicated in an interview last August and breathlessly retailed by CNN. Moreover, owing to its rainforest riches, Brazil ought to play a leading role in this New World Climate Order, Lula believes. Accordingly, he will be in attendance at COP27, alongside both Rishi Sunak and former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Besides these three, leaders and representatives from around 190 other countries will be in attendance at Sharm El Sheikh, including a veritable Who’s Who of European heads of state: France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Olaf Scholtz, and Turkey’s Recep Erdogan. Even Italy’s recently elected firebrand right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will be in attendance. On November 11, President Biden will also put in an appearance, presumably to underscore, yet again, how completely his administration repudiated the climate policies of the Trump administration and is now well on the way to driving Americans back to the living standards of the pre-industrial age.
COP27 is but the latest iteration in a long series of carefully choreographed climate agitprop events stretching all the way back to the UN’s inaugural climate conference in Rio de Janeiro 30 years ago. Its purpose is to pressure the hard-pressed human race — especially those living in developed countries — into accepting the extremist anti-progress and anti-development creed of radical environmentalism. In particular, COP27 and its predecessors are thinly disguised shakedowns in the service of global socialism.
The United States, the U.K., and other wealthy countries have all pledged to contribute hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars for direct transferral to poor countries, the alleged victims of excessive growth and consumerism in the First World. While the Biden administration has already managed to transfer several billion dollars to the climate kleptocrats, hundreds of billions in “pledges” remain outstanding, and are likely to remain so if the GOP regains control of Congress next week.
So, for a public weary of gloom and doom in the Ukraine, the South China Sea, the gas pumps and grocery stores, the southern border, and America’s crime-ridden inner cities, the pro-climate cadences of COP27 will be an unwelcome distraction.
For a proper perspective, follow events at The New American, which will have a team reporting on site at Sharm El Sheikh during the entire conference. We will have continuous updates and live interviews to keep our readership and viewership apprised, up to the minute, of every new development in the never-ending effort to ram international socialism down our collective throats in the name of climate control.
